Yoshke the Musician (The Singer of His Sorrow, The Rented Bridegroom)
Yoshke the Musician is a bittersweet fantasy romance with music. Yoshke, an eccentric village fiddler with a poetic soul, loves Sheyne, but sacrifices his hopes so she can marry the handsome card player who has her heart. The village characters – cartoon characters yet sharply realistic, grotesque but touching – take sides in the romantic rivalry, and so does Yoshke’s klezmer band.
Originally written by Osip Dimov, the play was greatly reworked by the actor Joseph Buloff (who also created the title role), and his version took the Yiddish world by storm. Buloff described his rather expressionistic adaptation as “a childlike vision,” “larger and more colorful than real life.” The famous Vilna Troupe played it all over the Yiddish-speaking world, including a command performance for King Carol II of Romania.
The play was most recently performed under the title A Klezmer’s Tale: Yoshke Muzikant by the Yiddish National Theatre-Folksbiene in 1999. The Target Margin Theater produced an adaptation in 2014, and Theater J in 2019.
This translation is available in Yiddish Plays for Reading and Performance (SUNY Press, 2021). Contact Nahma Sandrow for performance permission.